This course interrogates representations of blackness in American popular culture. Using an interdisciplinary lens that considers the social, political, cultural, and historical realities that inform popular culture, students investigate how blackness is constructed and its implications.
This course examines Chinese literary and cultural practices related to gender and sexuality from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Using primary texts in translation, theoretical works, films, and visual materials, students explore the personal and collective politics involved in constructions of gender, sexuality, desire, and identity. Taught in English.
A study of several plays after 1600.
This course explores some of the radical shifts that occurred in English literature during the late eighteenth century. These developments involved not only changes in style, subject matter, and poetic theory, but also changes in the role of the author and the social purpose of writing. Both “major” and “minor” authors, male and female, are read as part of a complex revolution in cultural taste and literary practice.
A consideration of British fiction from the last half-century, this course will put you into the most current currents of literary expression. There is no canon yet in this course; instead, you will be invited to make and test bold claims about canonicity and how literary value is accorded and revised.
This course examines some of the most significant conflicts and turning points in the history of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth in Europe and its Caribbean slave colonies from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. We approach women’s reproductive bodies as contested sites of political struggle over issues as diverse as slavery, colonialism, population growth and birth control, religious reform, midwifery, the medicalization of childbirth, and nation-building. Centering women’s voices and experiences of the birth process where the sources allow us, we study the cultures and communities that women of diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds constructed around biological reproduction.
This course surveys European women's gendered experiences of war, revolution, and terrorism from the French Revolution to the present. Adopting gender analysis as its methodological framework, it focuses on the changing constructions of femininity and masculinity in relation to major global upheavals and theories of violence in the modern world The course examines the impact of such developments on the lives of European women of different socioeconomic, regional, and racial backgrounds. Topics covered include the Russian Revolutions, World Wars I and II, global terrorism of the 1970s, and contemporary European feminist politics of immigration and the veil.
An investigation of the ways historians read past crimes and scandals for evidence of broader social, political, and cultural anxieties and desires. Focusing less on details of incidents themselves than on the debates and public interpretation surrounding them, this seminar deals with crimes such as those committed by Jack the Ripper or French murderesses at the end of the nineteenth century. In addition to analyzing secondary sources dealing with crime and scandal, students scrutinize a variety of primary documents such as trial records, medical and judicial debates, scientific analysis of criminality, memoirs of notorious criminals and detective novels.
A general survey of political life in Latin America, as well as specific study of the most important countries-Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. Determinants and outcomes of political process are studied, as well as the political process itself. Consideration is given to both domestic and foreign influences and policies.
A survey and critical evaluation of research investigating individual, social, psychological, and cultural factors in sexual behavior, with some attention to the biological underpinnings of sexuality, along with comparison and contrast across individuals, cultures, and species. Common topics include sex research methodology, gender, sexual orientation, changes across the lifespan, paraphilias, and non-human sexual behavior. Readings include selections from works that have changed understanding of sexual behavior.
Introduces and explores new religious movements, sectarian spin-offs, and alternative communities in the U.S. that have tested the parameters of acceptable "religion" at different moments in history. Particular attention is given to intersectional dynamics. The class questions the politics and practices of labeling, especially the language of "cults," and centers on specific historical case studies in order to illustrate and analyze major theoretical and methodological challenges in and for the study of religion(s). It considers what draws people to create and join new religious movements, the distinctive worlds such groups endeavor to build, and the controversies that have historically attended them.
This course examines the evolution of LGBTQ+ characters in American plays and films of the last one hundred years. Students will examine the recurring stereotypes, coded language and images used to identify characters in the early decades of the twentieth century, and how their portrayal changes when Queer playwrights and film makers tell their own stories. Topics will include shifting perspectives on drag, camp, intersectionality and gender identity, and the impact of feminism, the civil rights movement, and the AIDS crisis.
A survey of the history, politics, culture, and literature of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,non‐binary, and queer people. Readings and lectures focus on works by and about LGBTQ+ people.
This introductory course explores the interlocking forms of oppression circumscribing Black women’s lives in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which their lived experiences and social realities are influenced by constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other markers of difference. It contextualizes Black women’s struggles for social justice historically within the broader narratives of Black freedom struggles and the Women’s Rights Movement. It underscores the ways in which despite their marginalized status, Black women have used their agency within both the private and public realms to interrogate, challenge, and resist their subordination and subvert the status quo, particularly as it is reinforced in negative constructions of Black female identity.